Kent City Council moves closer to approving fireworks ban

The Kent City Council plans to adopt a fireworks ban in the next several weeks but wants a bit more time to fine-tune the proposed ordinance.

The council spent about 90 minutes at a Tuesday night workshop discussing with Deputy City Attorney Pat Fitzpatrick language in the ordinance to clarify infractions as well as what would be required for a permitted fireworks display.

“This has been a great conversation,” new Council President Bill Boyce said at the end of the workshop. “That’s what we are elected to do. We are not rubber stampers, we are all individuals and all have good thoughts. … At the end of the day, we want to do what’s right for the public. I want to thank all of you for talking through this. I think the ordinance that comes out of this is something we can live by and something with a little teeth to it that we can enforce.”

Fitzpatrick will make a few changes and plans to bring the proposed fireworks ban ordinance to the council’s Public Safety Committee on Feb. 9.

If that committee approves the ban, the measure will go to the full council for approval. Because of a one-year notice state law requirement, the ban would not go into effect until 2017.

Kent voters (62 percent) approved a ban in an advisory vote to the council on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

The ban would prohibit the sale, possession and discharge of consumer fireworks.

Councilwoman Dana Ralph, who made a motion at a Nov. 18 meeting to postpone a council fireworks ban vote for further discussion, explained that delay never indicated going against a ban.

“There’s been this very unfounded misconception out there that by having the conversation we had tonight (Tuesday) that it was somehow ignoring the will of the voters and delaying so that things didn’t happen,” Ralph said about emails she received and letters published in the Kent Reporter. “It’s extremely clear from the amount of discussion we had tonight that there are questions around what this ordinance looked like and to just vote on it without this discussion would not be good lawmaking practice. … It was not any effort to ignore the voters.”

Numerous complaints from residents to the council over the last few years about fireworks going off in their neighborhoods before, during and after the Fourth of July caused the council to consider a ban and ask for the advisory vote.

The ban would allow permitted public displays, such as the Fourth of July show at Lake Meridian. The city fire marshal approves the permits.

Kent’s current city code allows people to purchase and possess legal fireworks from June 28 to July 4, but fireworks can only be discharged from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. on July 4. Violators of the code must pay a $250 fine.

That fine will remain the same under the new proposal as will the punishment of up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine for the discharge of fireworks in a reckless manner, a gross misdemeanor.

The new ordinance would make other violations a gross misdemeanor, including conducting a display of fireworks without a properly issued city permit.

The council decided it wanted to add infractions for property owners who knowingly allow fireworks on their property.

Whether a ban stops fireworks in Kent remained up for debate.

“I will support the will of the people for a ban,” Boyce said. “But we have to be careful about giving false hope that, assuming once this ban goes into place, all of the fireworks are going to stop. Our police officers today are stretched trying to run people down who are setting fireworks off illegally. I don’t want everyone to think it’s going to stop and everything in Kent is going to be peace and quiet.”